Uganda has arrested several suspects in its investigation of the weekend terrorist bombings that killed 76 people and wounded hundreds of soccer fans who were in the midst of watching the World Cup soccer games broadcast, according to a report obtained by the Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
At least six people have been arrested, according to reports. The Ugandan government is receiving assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One American was killed in the attacks and several others were wounded.
Ugandan government officials had said that there was strong evidence that the claim of responsibility by al Shabaab for the Uganda bombings on Sunday were real.
Al Shabaab, the Somalia-based terrorist organization, almost immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing attacks.
"We will carry out attacks against our enemy wherever they are," Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage speaking from Mogadishu told a reporter from the Associated Press.
Ugandan officials stated they received no warning, but that they were aware of al-Shabaab's threat to their nation. They reported that they were not given any advanced warning that the attacks would happen in Uganda, but that they had intelligence reports indicating members of the terrorist group were present in their country.
In a February 2010 statement that came as no surprise to U.S. security and law enforcement experts, the Somali-based al-Shabaab announced that its fighters are aligned with al-Qaeda's global terrorism campaign. The deadly group said in the statement, broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, that the "jihad of Horn of Africa must be combined with the international jihad led by the al-Qaeda network".
The group's statement also announced that its militants had joined forces with a smaller insurgent group called Kamboni, another radical Muslim organization.
That group is reported to be based in the southern town of Ras Kamboni. Kamboni's leader, Hassan Turki, is accused of funding terrorism and terrorist groups, according to a U.S. intelligence source.The Somali al-Shabaab claims its primary focus for now is uniting all Islamist terror groups and their supporters in order to create a Muslim state, or Caliphate, in Somalia to be ruled according to Sharia law.
The group's reign of terror includes public beheadings and stonings.
In a December 2009 terrorist attack in Mogadishu, al-Shabaab terrorists killed and injured innocent civilians at a graduation ceremony for Somali medical students. The attack also resulted in the deaths of the Ministers of Health, Higher Education and Education of the Somali Transitional Federal Government.
"This was a criminal attack on people dedicated to building a peaceful, stable and prosperous future for the people of Somalia," United Nations officials said in their condemnation statement.
"While the UN should be expected to condemn such barbarism, calling it a 'criminal act' is wrongheaded and treats an act of war as if it were a bank robbery," said former Marine intelligence officer and New York police detective Sid Francks.
Unfortunately, Somalia has not had even a facsimile of a central government since 1991, and its police and military are fearful when confronted with groups such as al-Shabaab.
In an intelligence analysis report, several security experts said they believed the Somali-based pirates are helping to fund al-Qaeda operations.
Also, Somalia’s police spokesman Dhexe Abdullahi Hassan is quoted as saying that al-Qaeda was the prime suspect in a smuggling operation involving counterfeit notes after international financial institutions starved the terrorist group of all money supplies, according to a report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police’s Terrorism Committee.
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